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arXiv · 2312.01135

Vision-based FDM Printing for Fabricating Airtight Soft Actuators

Yijia Wu·Zilin Dai·Haotian Liu·Lehong Wang·Markus P. Nemitz
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Abstract

Pneumatic soft robots are typically fabricated by molding, a manual fabrication process that requires skilled labor. Additive manufacturing has the potential to break this limitation and speed up the fabrication process but struggles with consistently producing high-quality prints. We propose a low-cost approach to improve the print quality of desktop fused deposition modeling by adding a webcam to the printer to monitor the printing process and detect and correct defects such as holes or gaps. We demonstrate that our approach improves the air-tightness of printed pneumatic actuators without fine-tuning printing parameters. Our approach presents a new option for robustly fabricating airtight, soft robotic actuators.

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Yijia Wu, Zilin Dai, Haotian Liu, Lehong Wang, Markus P. Nemitz. 2023-12-02. Vision-based FDM Printing for Fabricating Airtight Soft Actuators. https://doi.org/10.1109/robosoft60065.2024.10521961

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